When I purchased Keith Foulke in my keeper league auction I knew that Boston's offense would not give him regular save opportunities, but the time between each one is far beyond what I expected. And, now a days I hope that the Red Sox are down going into the 7th, so they will have a limited amount of time to run away with the game.

I don't even want to think about what it will be like when Nomar and Trot return .

Save chances are very weird, and almost totally unpredictable. The starts seem to have aligned perfectly for the Reds and Danny Graves, because it seems like all of his chances are coming in games that are 10-9, 8-5, 9-7 etc. With a team like the Dodgers you know Gagne is going to get his, because with their lineup and in that park, you know not many runs are going to be scored, so inevitably save chances will come, but as for the Reds and Graves, it has a lot to do ith dumb luck.

So far, my most productive closer, in terms of saves, is Cordero, but I still value Foulke more highly. He's still in the top 5 in terms of saves earned in the AL. One of these weeks he'll get 4 or 5 in a row and everything will look fine again. At least he's been pretty lights out.

It could be worse. You could have spent a higher draft pick on Smoltz, who has had even less chances than Foulke. The Braves either win by 4+ runs or come from behind in the 9th for their wins. Its starting to wear on me.

"Girl, you look so good, someone ought to put you on a plate and sop you up with a biscuit!"

I agree you can't really predict it. Good teams get more saves simply because they generally have better closers. Save opportunities have very little to do with how good your team is and seems to be just random luck, though good pitching teams with mediocre offense have a tendency to get more chances than most. More or less if you are just chasing saves the team matters very little, you go for a good pitcher and hope for luck.

thehat wrote:And herein lies the reason that I NEVER, EVER go for closers early in a draft. There is absolutely no way to forecast save opportunities.

Same here. I grabbed late round closers in all my drafts, mostly players like Benitez, Cordero, and Nathan, in hopes that one of them would turn out to be good. Well, whaddaya know, all 3 have been awesome I also drafted Marte and Riske in a few leagues, but I don't have to dwell on that...... Cordero and Nathan are 2 guys I got in almost every league. I'm happy